


From Ashes

by allyoops



Category: Game of Sultans (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bath Houses, F/M, Forced Orgasm, Forced to fellate, Rape, Self-Sacrifice, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-30 22:19:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19412551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyoops/pseuds/allyoops
Summary: Three times a man has come to her from smoke and ruin to change her life.If she is lucky, this might not be the last.If she isverylucky, it will be.





	From Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nonnybonny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonnybonny/gifts).



Hope was born in Rhodes. She grew up there, from girl to woman, and on the day she first walked alone from her home to run errands in the market, the Ottoman forces came to the city.

She never made it to market. Her basket disappeared into the crush of stampeding feet, her maid followed, and it was all she could do to pull herself clear of the screaming, running crowd. She thought, through the dust and the haze, she caught a glimpse of a handsome man riding a good horse, and she wondered that such chaos could be caused by one so fine. Then the crowds closed in, she fled down a side street, and thought no more of him until the end of the week.

At the end of battle, from out of the ash and ruin of the city, he came to find her. The sultan's vizier appeared on her street at day's end, the sun setting over everything the Ottomans had not been equal to sparing in their onslaught. She saw him first as a hazy, male form, backlit by sunset and obscured by the dust that still thickened the air.

For a moment she had known fear, but it fast became apparent he had not come to violate her body or to claim her as spoils of his victory, but to express, with deeply correct humility, his pious admiration.

“I have seen you,” he said quietly. “I have watched you work in the medical halls. You are gentle with the wounded. You show kindness to my men and your men alike.”

“What would it profit me, Sir,” she returned lightly, “to be cruel?”

“What indeed, lady,” he smiled.

Then he made his offer.

It was not the offer she first feared, his offer of her life and safety in exchange for her trade of flesh. Nor even was it the offer of his own name as a more honourable trade for her virtue. He offered her only passage: safe journey to his home, to Istanbul, and a new life there if she wanted it.

If her family wanted it.

She looked at the bloodstained, sunset-streaked streets of Rhodes. She breathed in the smoke and smell of new decay that wafted lazily up from the rubble, and she made her choice. She would travel with him, she would make a new home, and who knew but that it might in time become a worthy replacement for the one she had lost.

That night, on a quiet street in the presence of the Sultan’s loyal servant, hope was born in Rhodes.

*

Her new life was not all she had feared. She and her family were settled handsomely under Mesih’s protection, and even as an unmarried woman, the daughter of foreigners newly arrived, she suffered no unwanted advances as she went about her daily business. She made her home there, she established the routines of an ordinary life, and she was content.

It was nearly a quarter year after their arrival that _he_ came to her at sundown. He appeared as Mesih first had, a hazy shape of a man. He moved with easy purpose through the smoke and fires of the beach, the smell of fish crisping and crackling as the clean bright notes of salt wafted above of them. She had tarried to watch the water and wonder what lay through the sea fog, beyond the sun-brightened horizon, but this man did not come from the horizon. He came instead from the shore behind her, born of the land she now called home, as much a part of it as the rock and the roots beneath them. He became, as he approached her, ever more weighty and real, solidifying as he passed through the smoke until at last he stood before her.

The strength of command and empire bent the air around him like the air above a fire on the beach, such was the raw power that emanated from his frame. Her face chilled, then heated, and her heart ran in tight, frantic little stutters.

“Your . . . your excellency,” she whispered.

What did one call this man? She should know. She had availed herself of his hospitality, had taken the service of his vizier on the journey home, and he stood before her now, staring as though he had come to the docks in perfect anticipation of finding her.

“My lady.” He spoke with exquisite care, as though she were indeed something rare and fragile that had traversed the waters for him to find. “Mesih said I might find you here of an evening. Will you permit that I should walk you home?”

It was not, of course, only a walk home. Hope might not have been raised to the life and manners of a courtesan, but she was no fool. She understood the intent and offer that behind his question. Knew what it was he asked her to make available to him.

She calculated her words as swift and sure as birds in flight.

“I am a woman of discerning company, sire,” she said lightly. “Assure me of your grace, that I have no fear of you, and your good word will guarantee my acceptance.”

He bent at the waist to her, this man who needed bow to no one, and she lost her heart to him in a moment.

“My lady,” he said, “I offer you every protection at my command.”

So she held his eye, bold, fearful, and she gave him her hand.

*

He had not lied. Not really. But when the pirates came the next year to sully their shores, when the ships went out to sea, the safety and protection he had promised were shortly no longer his to command. Their forces throughout the deeper seas were unequal to the dreadnought black craft, the power and stink of the cannon, and the Ottoman forces quailed in the face of what stalked the Mediterranean.

It was not _over_ , they knew. Not exactly. Not yet. But it was a strange kind of nearly-finished they inhabited now. The weight of doom impending settled all around them as the sky blacked with the smoke of ships burning, and the women of the harem were barred, with pathetic futility, in the confines of the palace with their children.

The bread ran out. The children’s cries grew thin and desperate with the newness of need, a foreign sensation to small bellies that had never long been empty.

Hope, not yet able to give her husband a child, stood apart from the business of motherhood. At her side were Kosa, newly made Empress over the heads of women far longer in the Sultan’s service, and Fiona, long the Sultan’s bride but only newly heavy with his child, after years of bitter disappointment.

“I cannot stay here,” Hope muttered, nearly frantic with the strain of it, the not knowing, the waiting for rescue, waiting for death, for the second long such stretch of her life. “Please, can’t we leave?”

“Beschir will never allow it,” Kosa said, but Hope, noting that Kosa had not in fact said she did not wish to leave, promptly supplied her solution.

“The bath house, then. Come, it is still well guarded. We may take only ourselves, may we not? It will not tax the reserves of the sentries if we bathe a little while.”

Kosa followed Hope's gaze across the narrow stretch of courtyard, hesitated at the ominous black smoke that marred the sea and sky, then sighed.

“Well,” she said, “if we are to be spared, so much the better that we are refreshed. If we are to die at the hands of pirates, what greater harm can water do?”

So the three made their petition to Beschir, and though the eunuch guard did pull a very long face, it was not as though he had grounds to bar them from it. They were, if doomed, doomed already. They were, if they were to be spared, not likely to run any risk in the bath house. So they suffered the formality of a small guard and crossed the courtyard to the welcome quiet of the pools.

As they entered the bath house, the steam billowed from the pools in thick, sultry greeting. Fiona fussed over the swell of her belly and refused the sulphur springs, but she sank into the chill of a colder pool with an expression of such blissful relief that Hope knew she had made the right suggestion to come. Kosa, regal even in perfect nudity, joined Hope in the hot pool and smiled sweetly at her through sulfur-scented steam.

“Have you some premonition, my beloved sister,” she wondered, “that our husband is even now making his way toward us? Is your intention that we should be refreshed to bid him proper welcome?”

Hope declaimed any special knowledge of the Sultan’s fate, but, at seeing Kosa’s face fall, she attempted to soften the blow.

“That is not to say,” she said quickly, “that the outcome of the war may be not in his favour.”

“Oh but surely it must!” cried Fiona, from the pool some distance away. “How can you suggest it will not be?”

Hope murmured that she had no intention of suggesting any such thing. But she knew what the smoke of a ruin looked like. Smelled like. Felt like. She knew that the smoke painting the sky was the smoke of a mighty ruin indeed.

Whether that ruin was of the pirate fleet, their forces scattered to die like rats in holes while her husband made his way safely home, or whether it was the ruin of the Ottoman fleet, and the pirates were even now swarming Istanbul as vermin would, snatching and grabbing at all they could take . . . it was not for Hope to guess.

They would find out soon enough.

*

_That accursed dog's bastard of a Sultan had sunk his ship!_

That was the pirate king’s first raging thought on waking. He lay on the beach, stinking of ship life, war and impotent masculine rage, and invoked the names of all his most trusted deities in his vengeful plea that the Sultan’s ship, too, was at that very moment sinking to the bottom of the Mediterranean, and the Sultan along with it.

His first thought was to return to the shoreline and summon an allied ship of the fleet to collect him. But when he saw the flaming, smouldering ruin that was the harbour, his native cowardice won out and he ducked instead farther inland, hugging the shadow of the rocks along the shore until he found a crevice of an opening large enough to squeeze through.

Once inside, he discovered a passageway newly-widened by percussive misfire from the ship’s cannon. Picking his way over rubble, he advanced farther in, pressing on into the damp, stinking dark, determined to continue until he found his way to daylight or a quiet place to wait until the worst of the battle had calmed and he could either count himself among the victors, or take shelter from their wrath.

*

“I could stay here all day,” Hope murmured, setting her newly-cleaned hair in wet, warm waves over her shoulders. Kosa smiled fondly down at her.

“A tempting thought,” she agreed, “but I do not think we can indulge ourselves to that degree. You, though, my sister may tarry a while, if it pleases you. Fiona and I can take with us a portion of our guard, and leave you the remnant.”

Hope brightened.

“Think you so?”

“I insist,” Kosa said lightly, and bent forward to press a kiss to Hope’s brow. “You have looked greatly fatigued of late, and I am pleased to see you so refreshed. Your Empress bids you remain, and take all your pleasures here.”

So saying, she rose from the pool, rivulets of water cascading down over the gentle curve of hip and breast, to beckon to Fiona. Fiona was not as graceful on exit, but she managed well enough, and Hope floated, blissful in the magnitude of silence, as the steam rose and rolled around her.

She did not hear the breach in surface tension.

Did not hear him gasp, greedily, at the air.

Her ears were below water level, so she had no way of knowing that the hot spring which fed this pool had suffered a rupture from the percussion of cannon, and yawned open some distance beyond the safety of the wall to admit a desperate, diving swimmer into a kind of badly-aerated channel, which he had traversed the length of until the thing spat out into the bathhouse something far more vile than sulfur to pollute her presence.

She did not see him until she opened her eyes to the haze, and beheld his shape looming over her, dark and menacing, the third man to come at her from the fog, from the smoke, from the steam, and she knew in that moment, as she had known twice before, that her life would never be the same.

*

The woman in the pool looked good enough to eat. His mouth actually watered at the sight. Her face was exquisite, like something crafted from porcelain. Above the water rose full, plump breasts crested with a pink, perfect nipple each. She had creamy skin, water-slicked and dewy, and a wave of black hair spread out to float around her like a dark halo. A perfect, inviting vee of dark hair also winked at him from the very apex of her thighs.

He licked his lips, sucked in the thick, hot air of the bath house, and moved through the water to stare down on her flesh.

The moment she opened her eyes, his hand went to the dagger still belted to his waist. He had lost his sword in the ocean, and without a good cleaning this one might soon be lost to him too, but it could still cut her tongue from her head if he so willed it.

“A sound,” he rasped, “will cost your life.”

She floundered in the water, arms moving as her fear sent her feet to the bottom of the pool. She did not try to run, but she did back up, staring, breasts heaving with the shallow rapidity of her breath.

She might have been anyone, he knew. Might have been a serving maid, taking advantage of the rigid guard placed over most of the city’s well to do, swimming in a forbidden place for a sweet respite before she fled to the hills. She might have worked in the kitchens or lived in the town. She might have been a person of no particular consequence save to those who shared her home and name.

But she was so very perfect. So exquisitely composed even at the sight of him. So pristine in the inviolate regality of her bearing that he was inspired to look around him more closely at this particular bath house, and see the rarity of its design. The exquisite formation of mosaic glittering with more value and exclusivity than purely glass tiles would ever offer. He noted in the single exit its security. He saw in the profusion of water, of linens and sheer cleanliness its transparent cost both of construction and of maintenance.

His eyes lit on her with new interest, as befitted a pirate sizing up treasure.

“Tell me, my beauty: have I the honour of addressing the Empress?”

She looked at him with naked fear, and he readied himself to call her a liar if she dared dissemble. But when she spoke—her voice was music, low and rich in the thick, damp heat of the room, and his lust which swelled to match it—he knew she did not play him false.

“I am no Empress.”

“Then what are you, lady? Tell me you are not the Sultan’s whore if you dare, but I will cut that lying tongue from your head the moment thereafter.”

“I am his _wife_ ,” she spat, eyes flashing, and he gloried in her defiance. She would be sweet to break.

“His wife, but not his Empress? God’s balls woman, is he a madman as well as an accursed scourge of my ships and seas, that he does not make you his queen? What brighter jewel could he have in his crown than you?”

He drew the dagger, then, to gesture in lewd appreciation of her frame. She kept herself perfectly erect; regal.

“I am Imperial Consort to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. I am second only to her Imperial Majesty, and . . .” she faltered. He was tempted to prompt her with the dagger’s point, but forbore to do so. His patience was rewarded a moment later, when she concluded: “. . . and first in his favour.”

He licked his lips.

“You are his favourite wife.”

It was not a question. He could see the truth of his assertion written in her face, in the clean lines of her bones, the matchless depth of her eyes, green and good, as bright and clear as the waters of the Aegean under the sun.

She would be any man’s favourite wife, but so much better than that, she was _his_ _favourite wife_. Any bride of his enemy by that measure alone would have been a worthy conquest, but his favourite? The pirate king exulted in his victory.

If the Sultan was dead, then it was to the good. The pirates would sack the ruin of his city and lay it to waste. But if he lived, and lived long enough to see this woman broken and bowed at the pirate king’s side, then all for the better. Even if the Ottomans retook the city, the pirate king would know victory in this.

He advanced on her, forcing her to back up through the water. He moved on her heedless of the stick and cling of the shredded dark clothing that swam around his frame, mindful only of the hardened lust that took control of his gut and all parts warming and rising in readiness for the conquest he was about to make.

“Woman,” he said, and it was almost a croon, a parody of something loverlike as he pressed her lower back into the side of the pool wall, lifted his hand to stroke her hair, and smiled at the sight of her cringing back, ever so slightly, from his touch, “will you make yourself agreeable to me? Give me yourself without defiance, and I may spare your life.”

“ _Give_ you myself? I would sooner cut my _own_ throat with that dagger, if you are not man enough for the job of it.”

He beamed, then, with a mouth full of rotted teeth, and caught her around the back of the neck, pressing her face to his.

She squealed and writhed under his grip. He let her struggle; let her feel the strength of him, and, pressed against the inside of her thigh beneath the water, the strength of his intention and desire.

“Man enough for the job I am,” he vowed, once they had broken apart. “But you will suffer less if you please me more. It does not pain me to hurt you, lady, yet unless this is your wish, why should I? I wish to harm only the man you call husband, to whose bed you are summoned at his whim like a whore. If he yet lives, it pleases me to think he will know I have had you for my own and that I might get off you a child he can never fully claim, not knowing if it be mine or his.

“I might win this war, lady, and I might lose it too. But if I am to lose my life to your accursed dog of a Sultan, I will take my measure of satisfaction from his favourite bitch ere I go.”

Her cheeks flamed with the heat of the pool, of her struggle, and the shame of being so addressed by a man she must think worth less than the very excrement of whatever dog or monkey or spoiled little pet she herself might keep to amuse her in the confines of the harem. He smiled at her; lazy, confident. Keeping one hand locked around the back of her neck, he tore aside what remained of the front of his breeches and let the hardened readiness of his cock spring forth into the water.

She might not be able to see it clearly from above the water’s surface, but she had been made enough times her husband’s wife to understand the maleness of the gesture, and he was pleased to see the fear that sparked in those brilliant green eyes.

“Get on your knees, lady. And let us pray you can hold your breath as a woman ought to, or you will be finished before I have finished with you, and then I shall be forced to make my presence known to the little ladies in the schoolroom. I may or may not find your daughter there, but I trust I will find the daughter of a man you call master, and that will be enough for me.”

She did not tarry, but sank below the water with a wordless sob, and he forced himself, roughly, into her mouth.

He knew he could not keep her under long, as he did not wish her to drown before he’d had his full measure of her, but the moment he entered her mouth he knew it would be a fight to let her up again. Hers was the most ungodly perfect mouth, hotter somehow even than the water around them. He would have thrust into her throat at once, but her skill was greater than his desire to dominate her in that way. He’d never felt the like of it, her lips on him like a live thing, her tongue undulating sweetly at the underside of his cock, her teeth touching him only once, just gently, a perfect gentle frisson of sensation raking in the wake of her sweet lips that sent a shudder down his spine.

He nearly spilled himself into her then and there, and with a ragged gasp he drew back, grabbed her hair and hauled her up to gasp and choke and sputter for his entertainment. She looked up at him once she had caught her breath, not exactly beseeching, but close to it.

“You suck cock better than any whore in Christendom,” he muttered. “Who would have thought it of an Empress?”

She wheezed damply, and he grinned, appreciating the tactic for what it was.

“You would have had me finish in your mouth, eh, lady?” he marvelled. She closed her eyes and gave a single, broken sob. He laughed. “You want to keep me from that sweet cunt of yours, don’t you? Keep me from what belongs only to your Sultan, so I cannot put my bastard inside his wife’s belly. This is your game, is it?”

She bowed her head wordlessly, and he gave her face a sharp slap.

“By God I would have fucked you senseless no matter whose bed you whored in,” he decided, almost to himself. “But what a prize you are: a wife any man could be proud of. And I’ve the joy of breaking you.”

He shoved her over to the side of the pool, then, and she nearly went down under the water. He dragged her up by the nape of her neck and pushed her over, bent forward over the side.

She looked back over her shoulder in wild trepidation, and he laughed at her plain fear.

“Has he had your arse too, then? And you didn’t like it, I wager.”

She set her jaw defiantly and he laughed again.

“Tempting, lady. Very tempting. But you cannot cuckold a man by way of his wife’s arse. No, I will have you bent over so I may tell the man, if he lives, that I have fucked his woman like the bitch she is, and that any brats she whelps may like as not be my own get. He may kill me after that, or I him, but either way one of us will die with him knowing I have made you my own, and with that, I think I can be content.”

His words struck her somewhere very tender. She bowed her head over her hands, and he saw her shoulders heave. The surrender and misery of her posture was so arousing he again nearly came on the spot, and cursed himself for acting like a green lad when the entirety of his prize was so near at hand.

Impatient, now, to claim her fully he reached between her legs and probed roughly in search of his way forward. She whimpered at the invasion of his fingers, and he grinned, allowing himself the luxury of a few moment’s gentle fucking of her cunt in this manner. She squirmed under his touch, but did not earnestly try to break away until he began to pick up speed.

“Resist me, and it will be the worse for every other woman your master takes to his bed,” he warned. “I will not be so gentle with any of those that are left, once you have aroused me to violence. You hear?”

He thought she struggled to protect what she longed to keep safe for the Sultan, but when he returned his fingers to the sweet little slit nestled between her thighs he could feel her slicking beneath his hand, and understood at once her motivation for escape. He grinned, and escalated his pace, fucking his fingers into her with crude vigour until she cried out.

“Hold still now, there’s a good lass,” he crooned, enjoying her mounting discomfort. “I won’t be so rude to the ladies across the way, if you only give me my way in this. Just spread them a little wider now, there’s a good girl. Take it from me, nice and sweet. It’s better to make me happy, don’t you think?”

She sobbed into the back of her hands, the tension that ran down her spine visible in every knotted cord and sinew that rippled beneath that perfect, untouched skin. He had in him equal desire to mark it and to leave it pristine, that her perfection would be as unmolested as possible the moment he claimed her. She hunched forward, trying to evade without actually trying to escape, and he, merciless, followed her with his hand and fucked his fingers deeper.

She had no defence against him. Her body too long untouched by her husband was unequal to the task of resistance. She came with a broken cry, miserable, humiliated, the Sultan’s wife’s cunt clenching around his fingers like that of a common whore.

He _did_ come then, damn the bitch. The sound of her broken surrender, of her agonized pleasure, broke his control and he came in the water around her thighs, the seed impotent, wasted. He lunged forward in fury, attempted to fuck his way into her with a still half-hard cock. She made no resistance, but only looked back at him with limpid green eyes, and he half imagined she was laughing at him.

He cracked her across the face in fury, lighting her cheek with the mark of his palm, then climbed up onto the side, out of the pool, and hauled her up after him by her hair.

“Woman, if I do not kill you for that now, it will be better than you deserve. You will make me ready to have you or die for failing to.”

She bent her head silently over his softened cock, and worked, uncomplaining, to restore it to full life. But the strain of battle was telling on him, and even the bewitching expertise of her mouth was unequal to the task. He thrust her back with a cry of rage and advanced on her, murder in his face, half-crazed at the pleasure denied to him.

By god he would fuck his whole fist into her cunt if that was what it took to—

“Wait!”

Damn the sorceress, but he actually did. Stopped, mid lunge, in obedience to her plea and single, upraised palm.

She spoke softly, tonelessly, and fast.

“In the cupboard,” she said, indicating the far wall, “there are spheres. Blue glass orbs. My husband uses them to . . . to restore himself. To restore his vigour. That is, to regain virility.” She could not lift her face to his, but looked to the side as she finished her explanation.

“There are so many of us. And he is deeply sensible of all our needs. It is in this way that he is able to fulfill his obligations to all.”

He considered the little cupboard with great interest, then turned his rotted grin on her once again.

“Well then, lady, what are you waiting for? Fetch me this witch’s brew, and let me drink to the health of the Sultan’s apothecary. Though I wager you will more likely want to curse his name, ere I’m done with you.”

And he laughed, delighted, as she moved to obey.

*

Hope lost count of the number of times he fucked her. It was many, perhaps, or even not so many in number but such a cruel variety that she could not bear to think on it.

He put his mouth on her at one point, and she sobbed as though her heart was broken as he fucked his tongue inside her, bit the flesh of her inner thighs and, in this twisted parody of a lover’s kiss, forced her again to orgasm even as she wept and begged him to stop.

He had his hand in her again, the noises a squelching, mocking echo of the gentle lap and bubble of water in the pools, and she let herself go. Drifted in and out of the scene like it were her own dream, rather than a nightmare of the pirate king’s infuriated design.

She knew, distantly, that her guard would enter the room eventually. Knew they might easily overpower the pirate king if only he had not the leverage of her life to use against any attempt they made on his.

She knew, more immediately, that he was on top of her now. That he had stretched her arms up painfully above her head, forcing her breasts to lift for the caress of his tongue and the cruel bite of his teeth. His fingers bit into her wrists, pinning them in place as though she had any strength left in her to fight; to do anything but surrender, limp and beaten, as he again forced his cock between her thighs.

She suffered no less on this latest invasion for the enormity of him. She cried out at his invasion and he leered down at her, sweaty, lust-crazed. She knew she was lurching against the ground with every thrust, but somehow she didn’t _feel_ it. She felt the merciless hammering of her cunt as though it came from a very distant place, dreamlike and unreal.

He might have made her pregnant by now.

She didn’t like to know it, but the knowledge seemed more real and present than the very flesh of his cock in her cunt. This violation of her person she might have borne, the indignity a small price to pay if it meant Kosa and Fiona, the other wives and children, would all be safe. But the violation of her husband’s bed was a greater, graver matter. He had given her his protection, and though at present it was not hers to claim, she was none the less protective of the womb that should have been his, and his alone, to fill.

Maybe he was alive.

The pirate king did not seem sure. Perhaps even now the Ottoman forces were reclaiming the city, the pirates driven before them by whip and sword, and her Sultan would yet be at the door to reclaim that which was his.

But by then, would he even have her?

Hope stirred fitfully under the weight, not just of the pirate, but an ugly new fear.

Would her husband not be forced to spurn her, at least as long as it took her to carry any child to delivery, and assure the sanctity of his lineage? And what then, after the first child she bore had to be sent away, and her husband could not even take the risk of giving it his name? Could she ever come to him again with the perfect trust she had offered since that night on the beach, knowing he had rejected her child, no matter how rightfully?

She moaned, then, and the pirate king mistook this for her renewed arousal.

“Why my dear,” he gloated, rutting deep enough to wring from her another wail, “I do believe you’re beginning to enjoy this.”

And he spent inside her with a satisfied groan of his own, so he did not even notice when she started once more to weep.

The boom of the cannon reverberated beyond the walls. Hope heard, but did not care. War won, war lost . . . either way.

In the end it would be all the same to her.


End file.
